What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March. - Milan Kundera

تصور کنید یک دست شما را قطع کرده و به پیکر شخص دیگری پیوند زده باشند و یک روز، کسی در مقابل شما می‌نشیند و جلو روی شما، این دست را تکان می‌دهد و با آن به شما اشاره می‌کند. بدون تردید فکر می‌کنید که این یک مترسک است و هرچند که با آن به‌تمامی آشنا باشید، هرچند که مطمئن باشید که این دست خود شماست ولی از اینکه لمسش کنید، هراس خواهید داشت.

Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

They [human lives] are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven’s music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual’s life. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.
It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway station, and death or the meeting of Beethoven, Tomas, Tereza, and the cognac), but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty.